Craig Loehle

Craig Loehle

Credentials

Background

Craig Loehle is the principal scientist with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, which was established in 1943 by the pulp and paper industry to โ€œprovide technical assistance for the industryโ€™s goal of lowering the ecological impact of its spent pulping liquors.โ€4โ€œAbout Us,โ€ National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. September 29, 2008. Accessed March 2, 2012.

Loehle worked in the Environmental Research Division at Argonne National Laboratory 1991-1998 and was a Research Ecologist at Savannah River Laboratory from 1987-1991

Stance on Climate Change

โ€œI am not a ‘denialist’ and my recent paperโ€ฆ attributes about 40% of recent warming to human activity โ€“ estimating that this equates to a no-feedback atmosphere.

โ€œWhat I would deny is that tree rings are good thermometers, but this is a scientific view based on my knowledge of trees, not a political view.โ€5Craig Loehle. โ€œScientistโ€™s rebuttal of Michael Mannโ€™s ‘denier’ and other unsavory labels in his book,โ€ April 17, 2012.

Key Quotes

โ€œThe climate change โ€œbiodiversity crisisโ€ is like a whack-a-mole game (a carnival game where plastic animals pop out of holes and you try to whack them with a mallet), with an almost-daily claim popping up about this species or that at risk from climate change. Not just polar bears and coral reefs, but even avocados are going to disappear! Whacking each silly claim one by one is an impossible task, and the claims get into public consciousness whereas the refutations do not.โ€6Craig Loehle. โ€œClimate Change and the Biodiversity Crisis,โ€ Watts Up With That, March 16, 2014. Archived June 27, 2014.

โ€œI am not part of a conspiracy and am not directed by anyone. I have never received money from fossil fuel interests, as Mann states is true of all sceptics. On the contrary, I work for the US wood products industry (which has no official position on climate change and does not tell me what to say or think). This industry is the largest single renewable fuels user because it uses wood waste to generate steam and power at paper mills. It is also the largest recycler (of paper), plants millions of trees every year, and manages millions of acres of forest land to ensure protection of wildlife. Only a fraction of my work concerns climate change.โ€7Craig Loehle. โ€œScientistโ€™s rebuttal of Michael Mannโ€™s ‘denier’ and other unsavory labels in his book,โ€ April 17, 2012.

โ€œWithin the United States, the claim that bad climate effects can ‘already’ be detected is a totally subjective and unsupported hypothetical.โ€8Craig Loehle. โ€œClimate Change Impacts In The USA are Already (NOT) Happening,โ€ Watts Up With That, March 8, 2012.

Key Deeds

July 7โ€“9, 2014

Craig Loehle was a speaker at the Heartland Instituteโ€™s Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC9) in Las Vegas, Nevada.9โ€œReturn of Climate Denial-a-Palooza: Heartland Institute Hitches Anti-Science Wagon to Vegas FreedomFest,โ€ DeSmog, July 7, 2014. Archived July 14, 2014.

DeSmog has done in-depth research on the other speakers and sponsors from Heartland’s ICCC9, which can be found here.

May 2012

Craig Loehle was a speaker at the Heartland Institute‘s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7).

DeSmog researched the co-sponsors behind Heartland’s ICCC7 and found that they had collectively received over $67 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers and the conservative Scaife family foundations.

2011

Co-authored a study (PDF) with fellow climate change skeptic Nicola Scafetta. The study, titled โ€œClimate Change Attribution Using Empirical Decomposition of Climatic Data,โ€ contends that โ€œcurrent models underestimate the strength of natural multidecadal cycles in the temperature records, the anthropogenic contribution to climate change since 1850 should be less than half of that previously claimed by the IPCC.โ€10Craig Loehle and Nicola Scafetta. โ€œClimate Change Attribution Using Empirical Decomposition of Climatic Dataโ€ (PDF), The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, 2011, 5, 74-86.

March 8โ€“10, 2009

Loehle was a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s 2009 International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC2).

His presentation was titled โ€œ1,500-Year Climate Cycles, Broken Hockey Sticks, and Ocean Cooling.โ€11โ€œ1,500-Year Climate Cycles, Broken Hockey Sticks, and Ocean Cooling,โ€ Speech at the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change. Viddler video uploaded by โ€œHeartland,โ€ June 15, 2011.

DeSmog researched the funding behind Heartland’s Second International Conference on Climate Change, and found that sponsor organizations had received over $47 million in funding from energy companies and right-wing foundations, with 78% of that total coming from the Scaife Family of foundations.

2007

Published a paper in Energy & Environment titled โ€œA 2000 Year Global Temperature Reconstruction based on Non-Treering Proxy Dataโ€ (PDF) which set out to refute Michael Mann’s โ€œHockey Stickโ€ data.

The original study, which contained numerous issues, was corrected in a subsequent publication. According to RealClimate, the corrected study still contained inappropriate data selection, or the calibration and validation issues.12โ€œPast reconstructions: problems, pitfalls and progress,โ€ RealClimate, December 7, 2007.

Loehle commented on the corrected study at Anthony Watts’ blog Watts Up With That (WUWT).

Affiliations

Publications

According to his profile at the Heartland Institute, Loehle has written more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in forestry, ecology, geophysics, modeling, and other fields.

Horizon Research

Craig Loehle published a 2015 paper titled โ€œGlobal Temperature Trends Adjusted for Unforced Variabilityโ€ in the Universal Journal of Geoscience, published by Horizon Research Publishing Corporation.

Horizon Research is included academic librarian Jeffrey Beall’s list of โ€œPotential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers.โ€ According to Beall, while the journal describes itself as a USA entity, the publisher uses the URL http://zj.nkwww.com/, which is registered to Wanlun Guo in Linyi, Shandong, China.14โ€œLIST OF PUBLISHERS: Beallโ€™s List,โ€ Scholarly Open Access. Archived December 30, 2015. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6e9S9OnSn 15โ€œNew Open-Access Publisher Launches with 66 Journal Titles,โ€ Scholarly Open Access. Archived December 30, 2015.

โ€œApparently this is a Chinese operation and the spam email is misrepresenting the publisherโ€™s true location,โ€ Beall writes.16โ€œNew Open-Access Publisher Launches with 66 Journal Titles,โ€ Scholarly Open Access. Archived December 30, 2015.

Energy and Environment journal

Craig Loehle has published numerous papers related to climate change in the journal Energy and Environment (E&E). Energy and Environment often publishes the work of climate change skeptics and has been criticized for its peer-review process and publication of sub-standard articles. The current editor of the journal is climate change skeptic Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.17 Paul D. Thacker, โ€œSkeptics get a journalโ€ (PDF), Environmental Science & Technology, August 31, 2005. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.

Here are some examples of Loehle’s publications in E&E:

Other Resources

Resources

Related Profiles

Craig D. Idso Credentials Ph.D., Geography, Arizona State University.โ€œChairman,โ€ CO2Science. Archived October 3, 2015. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/rXZy0 B.S., Geography, Arizona S...
The Heartland Institute Background Stance on Climate Change Funding Key People Actions Heartland International Conference on Climate Change Related&n...
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CO2Science) Background The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CSCDGC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization ...
Credentials BSc, Zoology and Comparative Physiology, Birmingham University.โ€œCraig Mackinlay MP - Who is he?,โ€ Politics.co.uk. Archived December 7, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/4nyJ2 ...